The Grid

A young lawyer finds himself trapped between his career, a mysterious new love interest, and an online video game.

Asher Cook and his best friend Chad sit in the back row of a law school classroom, mocking the professor and anticipating their upcoming spring break trip to Mexico. Upon their arrival in Cabo San Lucas, Asher meets the attractive and elusive Greygan Duke, an internet consultant for a company called Keygrip. She shows him a popular online virtual reality game called The Grid. While in Mexico, however, the “appropriation” of Asher and his family’s assets begins, as someone from Keygrip breaks into his Denver apartment to set up electronic surveillance equipment and illicit software on his computer. Asher falls in love with Greygan as the school year ends and he studies for the bar exam. However, Asher returns to his apartment after the first day of the exam to find that she has left him—and worse, has stolen his identity to transfer millions of dollars from his families’ accounts. As he tries to put Greygan and his financial woes behind him, he begins his career as a plebe at the prestigious law firm Sigsbee Knolls in New York City. Robert Jameson, the firm’s managing partner, takes Asher under his wing since Jameson and Asher's father were associates at the same firm thirty years earlier. Soon Jameson assigns Asher to assist with a billion dollar merger of an important firm client, which, to Asher’s horror, is Keygrip. After digging through the files, Asher is stunned to discover that Keygrip’s original attorney was his own father. Asher then learns Keygrip is intertwined with global terrorist organizations. His only hope to unravel the mystery of who really runs Keygrip and to prevent its sinister plot to ruin the financial world is to trust Greygan—as they meet covertly in the deepest and darkest corners of The Grid.

Mr. Leigh Augustine lives Denver, Colorado where he enjoys snowboarding, playing lacrosse, and learning tae kwon do. He received his undergraduate degree in business from the University of Colorado at Boulder and his law degree from the University of Denver. He is a practicing sports & entertainment lawyer that has negotiated contracts for Olympic skiers & snowboarders, professional lacrosse and hockey players, college & pro coaches, musicians, writers, artists, filmmakers, and one celebrity chef. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Denver, teaching the Sports Law class. After publishing numerous scholarly articles in law journals, he decided to pursue the goal of writing a novel. He wrote the first draft of this book in six months, entirely on his smartphone, during the forty-minute light rail commutes to and from his downtown office. At the end of each ride, he emailed the scribblings to his Mac, where he copied and pasted them chapter by chapter.